I thought I’ll throw in some personal experiences and observations from last weekend. It was a weekend when hundreds of thousands of Italian students and universitarians came together in Rome, constituted probably the biggest student demonstration since I don’t know when, and held the first national assembly of the faculties and universities that have been in mobilization for many weeks already.
On Friday morning there were a few different parades that later joined together. I went to see the one that departed from the main campus of Sapienza. Piazza della Minerva was already crowded, and different universities and faculties had their own sections, banners, megaphones. Hardly any flags or any traditional political symbols. People do sing "Bella Ciao" though, and do emphasize the antifascist tradition, and there are good reasons for this, because neofascist groups have tried to gain some ground in some schools. In demonstrations like this however, it’s made clear that there’s no space for any kind of fascists or racists.
This parade was lead by a truck of Sapienza students, with people giving speeches, and in front of the truck there were some eight organized lines of Sapienza students. The first lines carried symbolical "shields" which were made to look like books and had all kinds of book names written on them, from Das Kapital to Kama Sutra. Our word is our weapon, our books are our shields. There were of course lots of other trucks, lots of different banners, lots of creative things inside the huge demo. A lot of symbolism around the theme of the wave, of course. For example, people carrying a huge blue tarpaulin, representing "the wave that reforms the university autonomously".
We met a friend from Padova who told about how they managed to get their special train. It was a bit different story than the Milanese one. They for example had collected a "baron tax": they made professors pay a certain amount of money to finance the trip. Saw some group of Livornese students holding a banner with a variation of the popular slogan about not paying for crisis: "La crisi la paghino i padroni", the ones to pay for the crisis are the rich folks themselves.
The demonstrations are always very very long, it seems. People walk walk walk, for hours and hours. The good thing is that in Rome there are so many cafeterias and pizzerias on the way. The demonstration goes so slowly it’s possible to grab a piece of margherita or drink a cup of coffee and get back to the demo.
After the demo it was time to lay back and relax. Later in the evening went to Sapienza, where folks from other cities had put up their camps in the classrooms of the occupied faculties. Matresses, sleeping bags, food and wine, all that stuff here and there, some people playing football outside. Some people were painting a huge mural inside a classroom at Political Sciences. Good idea to leave some trace of the historical weekend, so there’s something that reminds also future students that there’s been struggles like this. Later in the evening I got to know there were some other foreigners besides me and my friend, someone from Paris and someone from N.Y. Met also some homeless migrant dudes who had come to Political Sciences to hang out and sleep.
Slept the Friday night at Sapienza, not too comfy obviously, but in the morning everything was better after getting some coffee and a fresh cornetto. Good service, they brought big boxes of cornetti and gave them out for free. The first plenary was supposed to start at 10.30 but it was more than an hour late. The plenary was held in the open, outside Rettorato, the administration building. Lots of people sitting, chatting, reading, listening. The plenary was opened and facilitated by Sapienza students. First, there were two female students who read two documents prepared collectively at Sapienza faculties. Both addressed the situation of the movement and some future prospects. I got the impression that these two more or less represented the two main tendencies inside the Roman movement: the viewpoint of Uniriot, and the viewpoint of Collettivi. I might be wrong. However, even if there are differing tendencies and viewpoints, I don’t think anyone has great interest in creating political dividing lines inside the movement, or engage in ideological debate. It’s not about ideologies, it’s about the wave.
The third speaker was a guy from a group of precarious researchers, saying that the researchers are taking part in the assembly too, discussing not only research, but also other topics in other workshops. He also stated that this movement is giving inspiration and courage to many others, and in a way, contributed to the decision of CGIL to call a general strike for 12 November. The fourth speaker was a guy from Germany who told people about the on-going student protests at German universities. Around this time it was time to take a lunch break. Pizza al taglio in San Lorenzo of course. To be continued…